There's nothing wrong with me

It's been a good day. A humbling day, but a good day. Because look! I'm still around to write about it!

There's nothing like setting up a same-day doctor appointment and then getting there 20 minutes late. (What is wrong with me that I can never seem to unchain myself from the office in time?) Especially when the well-meaning HMO folks tell you when you get to the desk that you're 20 minutes late (as though you hadn't been counting the seconds all the way there) and that the doctor is only willing to see you after all because she's a saint.

It's also refreshing to learn that it only takes 10 minutes and a $30 copay to learn that there's basically nothing wrong with me.

I think I am a hypochondriac. I'm just a really bad hypochondriac. Here I'd gone to all sorts of trouble to make sure I didn't really have bronchitis or pneumonia or some strange everlasting hack-like-a-seal disease, and then I just plain blew it while the Dr. was talking to me.

Note to self: do not tell the physician examining you that although you have this cough that's really bothersome and may be fatal, you are also in training for a half-marathon, and actually, running really seems to clear up your lungs nicely.

The doctor gave me me a prescription for an inhaler that is apparently the best way to beat a hangs-on-forever post cold cough. And then she reminded me that in 9/03, I had the same type of thing and was given same prescription (I think I used the inhaler twice).

I'm pretty sure an internal memo has gone around the GP's at Kaiser with my medical record number on it. Or perhaps they've just flagged the computer records so that when I call, the advice nurse gets a message on the screen that says something like: "Worries too much about minor symptoms. Will want a same day appointment. Will be very late. Humor her, prescribe something, and move on to truly ill patients."

Later in the day, I got a parking ticket because I was 10 minutes late getting back to the parking meter. It seems I didn't learn my lesson about time well enough earlier. :)

On a brighter note, S lost her first tooth today! She was at the after school care facility, asking one of the nice staff members there to pull out her tooth. "Why don't you just pull it out yourself?" Theresa said. I think she was joking, but S just said, "Okay." And she just reached in and yanked it out. And then she spent the rest of the day saying, "I just yanked it out! I can't believe I just yanked it out!"

So it looks like the tooth fairy will be coming to our house tonight, leaving the obligatory money and answer to a letter, since R has had a lively correspondence going on for a while with the fairy, and now S finally gets a turn. (Have I blogged about this before? I think so, but am too sleepy to look it up!). I tell ya. I don't know how that tooth fairy does what s/he does.

The latest letter goes like this (she dictated it to her sister):

"Dear Princess Sleeping B,
Are you a girl or a boy? Have you met the Queen?
S.
P.S. May R have fary Dust?
By Sister R"

What's with the gender question? And who's the Queen? And what will the fairy say, I wonder?